Elmore is a mental health, complex needs, domestic abuse, and personality disorder charity working with some of the most complex needs in the Thames Valley. People often do not fit easily into services and can be hard to engage. It’s an exciting time for Elmore—we are starting new services and expanding beyond Oxfordshire, and we’re seeking to recruit new Trustees in the Thames Valley.
As a registered charity and a charitable company, Elmore employs over 60 people to provide mental health, complex needs, domestic abuse, and personality disorder services in the Thames Valley.
Elmore has a local and national reputation for delivering innovative services and pioneering research. We identify gaps and barriers in services and work to address these. This can include advocacy alongside clients, as well as research, partnership-building, and piloting new initiatives and projects to benefit our client group.
Elmore’s flexible approach seeks to engage with people who may have slipped through the net of mainstream services, and to make a positive and lasting impact on their lives. We seek to address each of these four reasons why clients do not fit easily into services and can be hard to engage.
Elmore clients typically benefit from longer-term interactions. This contrasts with the many well-developed services for mental health issues in Oxfordshire which have been developed around a model that relies on short interventions. Initial approaches may be rejected. The Elmore worker will persevere, trying out different tactics to engage the client and build up their trust, possibly for the first time, in an agency. The build-up of trust delivers positive outcomes for the individual and the system in the longer-term, which means work can go at a slower pace. Our impact is a ‘slower-burn’ impact of increased time needed to achieve useful outcomes with clients.
We persistently try to engage people and make all potential avenues for treatment and support open and accessible. It is routinely our distinct role to make sense of the range of agencies that might be able to offer a relevant service, and to support people to access the
